moving down the front hall.
A huge grin broke across my face. My Cabin Boy returneth.
Pulling myself up, I stepped out of the tub. My skin immediately pebbled from the cool air; Paul kept the apartment set at sixty-eight, but I was used to hotter. Teeth chattering, I grabbed a towel and dried myself off fast enough to give myself friction burns. Even though I was planning on getting utterly soaked again (inside and out), no one liked lying in a wet spot.
Sufficiently less moist, I wrapped the damp white towel around my torso and tucked the end between my breasts. Style by way of muumuu. The mirror over the sink showed me not quite at my finest. Without makeup, my face was very much a second-glance sort of pretty: large green eyes, sharp nose and chin offset by full cheeks and cupid-bow lips, pale skin that made Goths burn with envy. Thick black hair framed my face with a million annoying curls. Fair skin, dark hair—a striking combination that added up to bleaching, tweezing, and cursing. On the plus side, my body was lithe and lean, with tits that didn’t quit and strong, shapely legs. On the not-so-plus side, barefoot I stood at five-foot-four.
I really should have opted to look like a supermodel when I had myself magicked into a human. Twenty-twenty hindsight, and all of that.
A quick finger-comb proved that my hair was on strike. Fuck it. I’d pretend the tousled wet look from the 1980s was back in fashion. And Paul would be too busy locking lips with me to notice my scary hair.
Another thump, closer to the bathroom. Time to get lusty.
Thinking about whether I would start Paul off with a tongue bath or the real thing, I opened the bathroom door and padded down the hall to the living room. And froze.
Standing by the entertainment center, a woman turned to face me. Her long brown hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back, and a white toga draped around her curves like a frat boy’s wet dream. Her blue eyes fixed on my green ones, and I felt the air whoosh out of my body.
Megaera.
Look at that, the Arrogant had been right: she really wasn’t in Hell.
My heart sank down to my toes, pausing only to set my stomach aflutter. I wanted to laugh for joy; I wanted to hurl curses and assorted cutlery at her. I wanted to punch her teeth out until her mouth was bloody; I wanted to kiss her and crush her in a loving embrace. And I wanted it all to happen right now.
Bless me, how on Earth did mortals ever control their emotions? Screw that—how did they ever understand them?
Not knowing what to say, I just stared, taking in her appearance. Same old Meg. In the thousand-or-so years I’d been friends with her, I’d rarely seen her dress any differently. The ancient-Greek thing worked for her; she got a kick out of looking delicate. It was part of her warped sense of humor. My chest tightened as a memory flashed in my mind: Meg and me, roasting human drumsticks in the Lake of Fire, giggling like schoolgirls as we shared jokes about the Arrogant and Hell’s elite.
And then I remembered the softest brush of her lips on my own as she kissed me and left me to die.
Now, standing before me in Paul’s apartment, Meg grinned. There was nothing in that grin that spoke of friendship. It was a thing of madness—all hunger and anticipation.
The sight of that cold grin cut through my tangled mess of emotions. My breath catching in my throat, I stared at her again, stared through her shell and saw the flicker of an aura around her: red and thick, like freshly spilled blood.
In a strangled whisper, I said, “You’re not Megaera.”
The grin pulled into a leer, and her voice hit me like shattered glass. “I never said I was.” Crimson pooled in her eyes, then leaked out of the corners and meandered down her face, staining her cheeks.
Oh shit.
My nostrils pinched from a sudden stench of rotten eggs and charred meat, emanating from not-Meg like rank perfume. Brimstone.
Apparently, tonight was Hell Night. Silly me, I’d thought that was just a collegiate fraternity thing.
As I stared into her bleeding eyes, my brain desperately signaled my legs to run like fuck, but my feet were glued to the floor. Helpless, I watched her form shift and blacken, sliding into an ebony caricature of flesh. The face wizened and cracked with age. Brown hair melted into black snakes that coiled in elaborate braids crowning her head. An enormous serpent undulated around her bony shoulders, flowing over her like a slithering ouroboros. The white tunic charred and lengthened until it was an obsidian gown of mourning. Behind her, massive bat-like wings slowly unfurled, engulfing the living room in shadow.
Swallowing thickly, I gazed upon Alecto, one of Meg’s two sister Furies. I would have prayed fervently, except I didn’t know which direction the prayers should go—up to Heaven or down to Hell. Mental note: Get religion.
Mental note, part two: First survive encounter with malefic entity.
All the bones in my legs melted into pudding, and I crashed to my knees before the Fury. Maybe she’d see it as a sign of respect. Or abject terror. Either worked.
“It seems your newfound soul has weighed down your tongue.” She grinned wider, displaying fangs that looked sharp enough to rend steel. “Or perhaps you are just being rude.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Insulting a Fury was a surefire guarantee for a very short life expectancy, so I quashed my fear as best I could and opened my mouth to speak. While I was—had been—close with Meg, I’d had almost no interaction with Alecto. I opted to go the formal route.
“Greetings, Alecto Erinyes.” My voice squeaked, but at least I didn’t stammer. Yay, me.
The snake sliding across her shoulders moved down to duck its head beneath her left breast. “Your manners are appropriate for a human,” the Fury said as the viper copped a reptilian feel. “But your timing needs work.”
Eek. “My apologies, Erinyes. I’d mistaken you for another.”
“Indeed.” She raised a clawed hand to caress tendrils of serpents dangling by her ear. They darted out miniscule forked tongues and tasted her fingers. Beneath the mound of her breast, the larger snake flowed down and around, wrapping her waist in a scaled girdle. “You saw me as my sister. As I wished.”
“Why?” The question was out of my mouth before I could call it back.
She leered, and her serpents paused in their finger-bath to hiss their scorn. “You, of all creatures, ask me why I parade as another?”
I bit my lip. Okay, she had a point. But it wasn’t exactly my fault that I’d taken Caitlin Harris’s form when I’d run away from Hell. Demons weren’t trained to do the ethical thing. And really, the witch hadn’t exactly complained at the time. (Then again, she’d been too busy experiencing the best orgasm of her life to bitch about me stealing her looks. And credit cards.)
“Besides,” Alecto said, her bloody gaze crawling over me, “I thought borrowing one of my sister’s outfits would be amusing.”
Amusing, she said. I called it sadistic. My eyes began to water from the stink of spoiled eggs. Bless me, had there really been a time when I’d relished that smell?
She folded her arms over her chest, watching me for a
